A/n: Hi, so this is just a little one shot episode coda for Series one Episode 23, which I wrote really for myself, and wasn't going to bother posting. However its H50 day and I'm super excited about series 2 premiering tonight, so I wanted to contribute something.
For my husband, because everything always is.
Hope you enjoy.
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Episode 23 (S1) - Noticing things.
Lt Commander Steve McGarrett was good at noticing things. Some might even say it was his speciality.
He saw when boot marks didn't match those he was looking for. He saw when tree branches were snapped by running assassins, and when the clouds above told him rain was coming. But it wasn't that he could just see what was there, he could see what wasn't; spaces where things where meant to be. 13 inch laptops, for example. Or fathers.
Hell, he could even notice the pain in his partner's voice from a couple of whispered words, and know exactly why it was there and what he was going to do about it.
The thing most people didn't know about Steve McGarrett was that when he choose, he could also be an expert in how not to see things.
On his knees in a hospital car park he didn't notice the way the rough asphalt dug into his skin, as he fought for breath. He didn't notice the curbed alloys of the silver Camero his hand lay possessively on, as each of those half breaths tightened his chest further. He didn't register exactly how many minutes and seconds it took to successfully banish the image, of a husband holding his wife tight, to that darkest corner of his mind he rarely visited, so that he could stand again.
Driving home from that hospital, on that cool Hawaiian night, he knew just how to look in the mirror without noticing the back seat was empty, and that the small brown teddy he had placed there rolled unrestrained across the leather seats as he took the corners too fast. Or how it fell unloved into the foot well, as he slammed on the breaks and parked the car he drove so often it might as well have been his, in its usual spot outside his house.
Walking through his silent childhood home, McGarrett didn't notice the pang of regret as he refilled the shopping bags he had emptied just a few hours earlier. He didn't look at the ingredients to make the pizza he had foolishly planned for tonight, or at the lurid cartoon on the unopened DVD case sitting unceremoniously on the counter.
Upstairs he didn't notice how cold his spare bedroom looked, as he kicked the door closed, after stripping it of its latest accessories. The pink comforter was simply returned unused to its bag, along with the matching nightlight, without a thought. He didn't feel a strange twist in his chest as he deliberately forgot to remove the newly placed photo from the bedside cabinet.
He didn't notice how the bags grew heaver and heaver until they were full with all of his stupid impulse purchases, and he didn't notice how, once deposited outside; those bags dwarfed the small one that easily held all his own trash from the past week.
Those extra bags that innocently told the story of the company he had been expecting this evening were just something else he wouldn't notice in the morning, when he left for work, at his usual time, no longer needing to make an extra stop on the way.
Lying in bed silent and alone hours later, Steve didn't notice how his stomach grumbled, denied of food because cooking for one had seemed pointless. He didn't curse at his own stupidity every time he caught himself straining to listen in case a small frightened voice, that wasn't going to be there, called for her uncle.
No, Steve McGarrett wouldn't allow himself to notice anything tonight, because he was a goddamned Navy SEAL, and Navy SEAL's did not have their hearts broken by the fact that an eight year old girl and her father didn't need him.